Hemodialysis is a process that uses a man-made membrane, known as a dialyzer, to remove wastes, such as urea, from the blood. For hemodialysis, a patient is connected to a filter or dialyzer by tubes attached to a patient's blood vessels. Blood is then slowly pumped from the body into the dialyzer, where waste products and extra fluid are removed. The filtered or cleansed blood is then pumped back into the patient's body.
Traditionally, the double-needle treatment hemodialysis procedure requires one needle for blood flowing out of the body into the filter or dialyzer and a second needle to return the cleansed blood back to the patient's body. This flow of blood is continuous over the course of the hemodialysis treatment. The average treatment duration is four hours approximately three times per week. The needles are strategically placed on the body apart from each other.
Single needle treatment also exists. Single needle treatment requires a different type of apparatus that allows blood to flow intermittently. In such treatments, blood is removed and returned using a single needle with a slight pause in between blood flowing into the body and blood flowing out of the body. However, this decreases the efficiency of each treatment. As a result, single needle treatment is not widely used and the double needle treatment is more commonly utilized, requiring two punctures per treatment.
Double punctures every time a patient treats with double needle treatment causes twice as much trauma as with single needle treatment dialysis. Additionally, the amount of waste resulting from the double punctures when two needles are used is more than that when single needle treatment is used. As mentioned above, another problem associated with the current single needle treatment design is recirculation. The recirculation of previously dialyzed blood in the lumen of the single-needle catheter reduces dialysis efficiency and is a drawback of single-needle dialysis. Because of recirculation associated with single-needle treatments, it may be necessary to increase the amount of time that a patient is required to be connected to the dialyzer, which results in an inconvenience to the patient.
Therefore, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art, and more specifically a better method or device for hemodialysis treatments.